Dirty Rotten Scoundrel (Romantic Mystery) (J.J. Graves Mysteries) Read online

  “I’m doing good,” I said, squeezing her back, maybe a little harder and more desperate than I meant to. She leaned back and took my face between her hands and studied me long and hard, and then she nodded in what I assumed was satisfaction.

  “When are you going to make an honest man out of my son?” She scooted into the booth next to me and gave me an impish smile.

  “Apparently soon if your son has anything to say about it.”

  “I can’t tell you how nervous it makes me for you both to be staring at me like that,” Jack said.

  “Good,” she nodded. “Make sure you get your Great-Grandmother Lawson’s ring. People will start to talk if she doesn’t have a ring on her finger.”

  “I’m on it,” Jack said. “How come you never wore the Lawson ring? I’d never really thought much about it until I pulled it out the other day to look at.”

  “I told you your father and I eloped.” She turned to look at me with a sparkle in her eyes and a mischievous tilt to her mouth. “A group of us ended up in Las Vegas for a weekend, and Rich and I certainly knew each other but we weren’t exactly in a romantic relationship if you know what I mean.”

  Jack groaned and I couldn’t help but smile at his discomfort.

  “Needless to say, there was something about Sin City that changed things between the two of us,” she went on. “We found ourselves married by the time the trip was over. Rich bought me this ring at the chapel where we married.” She held out her hand and I looked at the gold band with barely a chip of a diamond in the center.

  “He was barely twenty-one at the time and hadn’t come into his trust fund yet, so it was what he could afford. By the time we got back home and explained everything to our parents, I’d gotten attached to it and didn’t want to wear the Lawson ring. Not to mention your father would’ve had to pry that ring off your grandmother’s cold dead hand before she gave it to me willingly. I always thought that ring was too good for her anyway. Good thing she died before you came along, J.J.”

  “Wow, Mom. Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” Jack said.

  Mrs. Lawson smiled at her son and stole a fry off his plate.

  “So she wouldn’t have liked me?” I asked, wondering how big of an impact marriage would make on his respectable family—a family that came from old money and traditions.

  “That woman didn’t like anyone. A very disagreeable person in general, but she had a ton of money and the marriage made good sense businesswise. You’re just what we need in this family to shake things up a bit.” She waggled her eyebrows comically. “Jack’s uncles and cousins are a little staid. Meaning they’re boring as hell. We try not to see them very often. That’s why we travel so much over the holidays.”

  “A good tradition for us to start too,” Jack agreed.

  Mrs. Lawson scooted out of the booth. “I’ve got to get back to the house with the food before your father sends a search party after me. Congratulations to you both.” She bent down and hugged Jack tightly. “It’s about damned time if you ask me.” She leaned down to hug me again too and whispered in my ear, “I always thought of you as a daughter. It’ll be nice to make it permanent.”

  Tears stung my eyes as she left money on the counter and grabbed her food. “She’s a good mom,” I said.

  “The best.”

  We finished up our food in silence and Jack left a generous tip with the bill. We snuck out while Martha was busy in the kitchen so we couldn’t get waylaid again.

  “So how do you feel about eloping?” Jack asked when we got back in the Suburban.

  “If it means there’s no one there but you and me and we get to have sex afterwards then I’m all for it.”

  “I can almost guarantee there will be sex afterward. Probably several times.” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the opposite direction on Queen Mary, away from the funeral home and the rest of town. It took us higher in elevation, the trees becoming denser and the houses fewer and farther between. Only one road intersected with Queen Mary on this side of town—Heresy Road.

  If we’d turned left it would’ve taken us back to the house I’d grown up in—the house where I’d seen the ghost of my father the day before. It seemed like a lifetime ago. But instead of turning left toward my past, Jack turned right. Toward my future.

  Jack’s house—our house—jutted up from the cliff majestically, as if it were part of the landscape itself. It was a log cabin of two stories, but not like any cabin I’d seen before. The logs were smoothed to an amber gleam and grey stone chimneys rose from each end of the house. A wide porch wrapped around all sides. There weren’t many windows in the front, but the back of the house was nothing but windows that looked out over towering trees so thick you couldn’t see the river below. It was more space than we needed. Even if we someday filled it with children it would be too much.

  Most people underestimated Jack. They saw him as the son of wealthy tobacco farmers, a little reckless and with a temper that had plagued him when he was younger. They saw him as someone who craved the wild side of life, fast cars and fast women, but with a sharp and complex brain that made him a great cop. He had Master’s Degrees in both criminal justice and psychology.

  But what they didn’t know about Jack was that he loved his solitude—his quiet spot on the side of a cliff that was completely private and closed off from the outside world. He liked good wine and intelligent conversation. And when he needed to think something through, he more likely than not did it in the kitchen cooking something that would make the mouth salivate and tastebuds explode.

  I’d been thinking about the body that had washed up on shore. It was puzzling, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to know more about it.

  “I keep thinking about the victim,” I said. “There was nothing familiar about him? Other than the tattoo, I mean?”

  Jack was busy removing the boxes from the back of the Suburban and I joined in to help.

  “It’s not like I could ID him from his face. It’s been six years since I was SWAT. I’ve stayed in touch with my brothers over the years, but we all have our own lives, our own families. Some transferred to other cities. A couple have passed away over the last few months. The rest are scattered here and there. Only a couple stayed with the team.”

  “It was that bad?” I asked, referring to the last op that had left Jack fighting for his life.

  He looked at me out of somber eyes, his face blank of emotion. It was the same face he used whenever we were at a crime scene. A face that didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking or feeling.

  “Yeah, it was that bad.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The boxes sat in a neat row on the dining room table. When I’d found them in the bunker, along with the dead body, I’d taken them almost out of reflex. I’d made the mistake of opening one of the boxes, kneeling on the concrete floor of the bunker next to the dead man. Inside it had been my birth records—my original birth records. Not the ones my parents had forged to pass me off as their own. I knew my real parents’ names and where they came from. The circumstances of their death.

  I’d read through each scrap until I was numb with cold and anger. And then I’d sealed all the boxes tightly with packing tape, transferred them to my car, and driven away without looking back. I couldn’t imagine what else could be worse than discovering the parents that had raised you weren’t your own, but if it were possible, the worse would be in the other boxes.

  Jack made a fresh pot of coffee and I opened the pocketknife with fumbling fingers, wondering where to start first.

  “I guess there’s no time like the present,” I whispered.

  Jack sat our coffee on the table and took my wrist before I could cut into the first box, and I gave him a questioning look.

  “If the FBI finds out about these boxes, they’ll be all over you and the contents before you can blink. It’ll make you an accessory after the fact. And it could cast suspicion again on your involvement prior to t
heir death.”

  I licked my lips but my mouth was dry as dust at Jack’s words. “I know that. I know this is hard for you. Straddling the line between following and breaking the law.”

  He blew out a breath in exasperation and gave my wrist a squeeze. “Dammit, Jaye. It doesn’t matter what I think or feel. I stand with you. Always. And the point I was trying to make was that I wouldn’t blame you if you set fire to the whole lot of it. Maybe there are things in there you’re better off not knowing. Maybe things that don’t ever need to be brought into the light of day. It could cause more questions than there are to answer.”

  I leaned in and kissed Jack softly. “Thank you for saying that. But you know as well as I do we need to do this. Just like I know if there’s something in here that the FBI needs to know that you’ll pass it along to them. Your integrity is part of who you are. And I wouldn’t ask you to change or compromise that integrity for me.”

  I stepped up to the first box and sliced it neatly down the center seam. I folded the flaps open and sat the knife down on the table. Probably a good idea considering how badly my hands were shaking.

  I recognized the neatly labeled files right away. My name was printed in block lettering on the one on top and the ink was smeared slightly where my tears had fallen.

  “This is the one I opened already. It’s got all of my birth records, as well as the hospital records on my mother when she was shot and lost her own baby. It also gives detailed records of what they smuggled back in the bodies of my real parents and the other military personnel they transported back to the US.”

  Jack stayed silent but I caught the muscles of his jaw clench out of my periphery. He took out the individual files and flipped through them briefly. I didn’t need to see the contents again so I moved on to the next box.

  They were getting easier to open. My lungs weren’t quite as tight as they’d been when we’d first started. I sliced the second box and pulled back the flaps and then gasped at the contents.

  “Holy shit,” I croaked out.

  Jack looked up sharply and grabbed my hands before I could reach into the box. “Hold on a second. Let’s put on gloves. It’ll make things less complicated later.”

  Stacks of crisp hundred dollar bills were banded together and lined up neatly. The money looked new and each group still had the bank wrapper around it so it was divided into ten-thousand dollar stacks.

  Jack handed me a pair of spare gloves and I snapped them on. “I guess this was their version of a savings account. I’ve heard of people putting their money in a shoebox under the bed, but never in a bunker with a corpse.”

  “Banks have shitty interest at the moment. Maybe the corpse offered them a better deal.”

  “Jesus, Jack,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  He pulled the money out and set it on the table. “An even two million dollars.” He pulled one of the bills out and held it up to the light. “And it’s real as far as I can tell, or the best counterfeit I’ve ever come across. A nice nest egg in case of an emergency. How many accounts did the FBI seize when they started the investigation into your parents?”

  “There were the regular accounts at the local bank, both personal and business. They had a couple of savings accounts as well, a retirement account, and a brokerage account. All of the money in them was normal for people of their age, careers, and income. Then they had the four offshore accounts, each under different aliases. The smallest was just over a million dollars. The largest had just under sixteen million. The FBI wasn’t really forthcoming with information after that. I don’t know if they ever found out where the money came from. If they did, they didn’t share that news with me.”

  “So another two million in cash just to be safe. Your parents were planners. They’d have an escape if things started to go to shit—money, IDs, safehouses.”

  I stared down at the money, knowing if Jack could see my face he’d be able to tell what I was thinking. My parents had had a contingency plan in place. They’d faked their death by driving their car over a cliff and staged it to look like a lovers’ quarrel turned suicide. They’d planted the scenes nicely. Arguing loudly at the restaurant where they’d had dinner over a man who’d shown too much attention to my mother—a man she’d supposedly acted too familiar with.

  There’d been other fights and a shoving match that had garnered attention from the local police. They’d had too much to drink and had gotten in the little two-seater convertible my dad had rebuilt, and then they’d sped down the narrow two-lane road up the side of the mountain, swerving to avoid cars head on.

  There had been witnesses that had seen them drive over the side of the mountain. They saw the car swerve out of control and they all said there’d been no sign that the brakes had been used. The cops were quick to label it a double suicide after the way my parents had set the stage. They didn’t investigate much at all. And the bodies they’d recovered from the scene had been beyond recognition. Only dental records had confirmed their deaths, and obviously that had been as big a lie as the rest of it.

  “I’ll start on the next one while you deal with that,” I said. I sliced into the third box and wasn’t surprised to see passports, cell phones, and driver’s licenses under multiple names. “Guess you were right about the planning.”

  I was almost on autopilot now, slicing and dumping the contents, scanning through them quickly while my heart raced inside my chest. This is what my father had come back for. Money and fake IDs so he could slip through the cracks. He hadn’t come back for me. To tell me it had all been a big misunderstanding. That I had the wrong idea about the kind of people he and my mother had been.

  Jack’s hand squeezed my shoulder and I dropped my head down, bracing my hands against the table.

  “It doesn’t get any easier,” I said. “Every time I think I’ve put it behind me I see the proof of what they were. For a long time after the FBI came to question me I lived in a state of denial, even though they had irrefutable proof. I couldn’t believe that all of that had happened right under my nose. That my own parents had lied to me and betrayed me.”

  “It shouldn’t make you feel guilty that you love them. They’re your parents, Jaye. You want them to be good and honest and kind. And it doesn’t make you less that you still have hope for that somewhere inside you. Their job was to love and protect you. It’s not your shame but theirs that they couldn’t manage to do it.”

  As usual Jack cut right to the heart of the matter. Despite it all, I did still love them. They were my parents, and blood was supposed to be thicker than water. But there was no blood either. Just lies.

  “Sometimes that psychology degree comes in handy,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

  He kissed the back of my neck softly. “I love you. Just remember that.”

  “I do. Every day. And I’m amazed by it. Humbled by it.”

  I cleared my throat and moved to the next box. My hand was steadier as I sliced through the tape. The box rattled as I moved it and piqued my curiosity.

  “Flash drives. What do you want to bet we’re not going to like whatever we find on them?” The box was filled with silver flash drives, neatly labeled with a series of numbers, almost like binary coding found in a library.

  “If your parents were as careful as I think they were, they’ll all be encrypted. I’ve got some skills in that area, but I’d be slow and I wouldn’t want to trigger any deletions if I made a mistake. Carver would be able to help us if I asked. He’s a freaking genius with computers.”

  Ben Carver was a close friend of Jack’s and one of the few FBI agents who could be in the same vicinity as me without questioning me for illegal activity. He’d helped us on cases before and he was a good guy. But I didn’t know if I’d be comfortable, even with someone like Ben, knowing what might be on those flash drives.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  There was one box left and I grabbed for the coffee cup Jack had sat on the table. I took a sip and realized it had gone c
old. I went to the sink and poured it out and then got myself a fresh cup.

  “I need to tell you something.” I turned back to face Jack. What I had to say deserved to be said face to face.

  His brows raised. “Do I need to sit down for this?”

  “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”

  He pulled out one of the dining chairs and took a seat, leaning his arms on the table. “Are you finally going to tell me what’s been bothering you?”

  Quick. Like a Band-Aid, I thought.

  “I saw my father yesterday.”

  “I beg your pardon?” He looked more concerned than alarmed, and I wondered if he thought I was having some sort of psychotic episode.

  “I’m serious. He was there when I walked into the house yesterday. Just walked right out of the dark like a fucking ghost. But he was real enough.” I took the silver ring he’d given me out of my pocket and tossed it on the table, and we both watched it bounce a couple of times before it spun to a stop.

  “My mother’s wedding ring. She would have been wearing it when they went over the side of the mountain. But obviously it wasn’t them in the car. He’s alive. And he’s here in Bloody Mary.”

  Jack was silent for a long while. He picked the ring up and held it between his thumb and forefinger and then stared at me out of hurt and angry eyes. “What the fuck, Jaye? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I knew the signs of Jack’s temper. He’d gotten a hold of it since his misspent youth, and he had a much longer fuse now, so it was slower to burn.

  “I’m telling you now.” My own temper was frayed at the edges, and the night’s lack of sleep caused a vicious headache to pound behind my eyes. “I just had to get a handle on it.”

  “By yourself. Because God forbid you lean on anyone or take any help from anyone. And while you were getting a handle on it a known felon and possible murderer is walking the streets.”

  “He took me by surprise. And he’s my father.”